This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court denied BP’s request to take another look at the settlement it reached in 2012 to pay thousands of people and businesses harmed by its 4.9-million-barrel oil dump into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

BP wanted to argue to the highest court in the land that some of the claimants seeking damages from the company in relation to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill can’t convincingly link their losses to the mega-disaster. So in August, the oil giant filed a petition attacking its own multibillion-dollar settlement (which included pleading guilty to manslaughtering 11 workers and bullshitting Congress about how much oil was spilling).

But SCOTUS won’t even give BP a chance to make its case. In fact, the justices didn’t even remark on their refusal to hear the appeal.

In the wake of the spill, BP has spent more than $13 billion settling claims by individuals, businesses, and government entities, and another $14 billion-plus for response and cleanup.The settlement that BP’s trying to get out of doesn’t have a cap for how much the company might have to pay out, but BP estimates that it will spend about $9 billion to resolve claims. So far, it’s ponied up about $4 billion, according to Fuel Fix.

Today, legal blogger Tom Young wrote a post encouraging all types of eligible Gulf Coast-state enterprises — those not in the casino, insurance, banking, or real estate industries — to get evaluated by an attorney who’s navigated the BP claims process:

One would be hard pressed to identify too many Gulf area businesses that did not endure some loss, small or large, that related in some way to the disaster. …

Even churches and nonprofits might be able to claim some compensation. The deadline for filing is expected to be set for June 2015.

Don’t think the payouts represent the end of this endless saga, though. Dishing out a bunch of money to people affected by the spill is nice, but wrongs won’t be righted that easy.

These days in the Gulf, BP is alleging that the spill is all cleaned up, but the Coast Guard begs to differ — and geochemists have found that some 2 million barrels of crude are still trapped in the deep. Meanwhile, Alabama is putting $60 million in restoration funding toward rebuilding a beachfront hotel destroyed by Hurricane Ivan. I guess otters, tuna, and dolphins will have to file their own claims to some of that settlement cash.

Three years ago, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig wrote an essay for The New Republic, “Against Transparency.” His argument was an uncommon one: Political transparency is not an unalloyed good. His core argument is well articulated here:

[R]esponses to information are inseparable from their interests, desires, resources, cognitive capacities, and social contexts. Owing to these and other factors, people may ignore information, or misunderstand it, or misuse it. Whether and how new information is used to further public objectives depends upon its incorporation into complex chains of comprehension, action, and response.

I am not a Harvard Law professor, so I will paraphrase the movie Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire version): With great amounts of information comes great opportunity for abuse.

We’ve all been in arguments during which our opponent cites a tangential piece of evidence as an indication that our entire point of view is wrong. This is, in part, Lessig’s point: legitimate debate getting mired in the ceaseless citation of trivia in an effort to call a debate a draw. Or, worse, that random information could be weakly strung together to imply wrongdoing. (It’s the stock-in-trade of Glenn Beck: minor links between unrelated things that give the appearance of conspiracies and nefariousness.) The bigger the pool of data you swim around in, the easier those links are to draw.

The legal profession’s version of this is the discovery process. All pertinent evidence is shared between sides; arguments are culled. The more evidence they have at their fingertips, the more they can build — or demolish — a case.

In 2010, British Petroleum asked two Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientists to assist in determining the rate at which the pipe severed by the Deepwater Horizon explosion was pumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico. They determined that amount to be about 57,000 barrels a day. The more that spilled, of course, the more that BP is liable. So, last week, the company subpoenaed the scientists’ private emails to prepare for a lawsuit against the government.

BP claimed that it needed to better understand our findings because billions of dollars in fines are potentially at stake. So we produced more than 50,000 pages of documents, raw data, reports, and algorithms used in our research — everything BP would need to analyze and confirm our findings. But BP still demanded access to our private communications. Our concern is not simply invasion of privacy, but the erosion of the scientific deliberative process.

Deliberation is an integral part of the scientific method that has existed for more than 2,000 years; e-mail is the 21st century medium by which these deliberations now often occur. During this process, researchers challenge each other and hone ideas. In reviewing our private documents, BP will probably find e-mail correspondence showing that during the course of our analysis, we hit dead-ends; that we remained skeptical and pushed one another to analyze data from various perspectives; that we discovered weaknesses in our methods (if only to find ways to make them stronger); or that we modified our course, especially when we received new information that provided additional insight and caused us to re-examine hypotheses and methods.

Their argument, in essence: BP can use our private deliberations to weaken our ultimate conclusions. And with billions of dollars hanging in the balance, that’s undoubtedly exactly what BP’s legal team intends to do: suss out instances in which the debate focused on different numbers and cite those as the examples that should be used. The scenario strongly echoes the infamous “Climategate” debacle which seems only now to be wrapping up. Emails stolen from university researchers were cherry-picked to present evidence contrary to established climate science. Sadly, it worked, further muddying the already gray waters of debate on global warming.

In nearly any debate, you can point to an instance that makes an argument counter to the weight of evidence. But it’s that weight — and its sources, and its derivatives — that are the desired outcome of rational deliberation. The scientists from Woods Hole applied that understood goal to their work for British Petroleum. BP, being motivated otherwise, seems prepared to use that intellectual rigor and honesty against them.

In the Northeast, power plants’ carbon emissions fell an average 23 percent during the three years of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s cap-and-trade program (compared to the previous three years).

BP is bullying scientists who worked on the Deepwater Horizon spill by subpoenaing all their emails related to the blow-out.

]]>http://grist.org/list/critical-list-northeast-cap-and-trade-program-dropped-emissions-world-environment-day/feed/0gristadminUpsetting photos of oil-slicked turtles from Deepwater Horizonhttp://grist.org/list/upsetting-photos-of-oil-slicked-turtles-from-deepwater-horizon/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/upsetting-photos-of-oil-slicked-turtles-from-deepwater-horizon/#commentsMon, 07 May 2012 14:21:34 +0000http://grist.org/?p=96907]]>Back in 2010, Greenpeace filed a Freedom of Information request covering endangered species affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill. They just received a response from NOAA, and it included more than 100 photos. They’re disturbing: The ones Greenpeace has released so far show endangered Kemp Ridley’s sea turtles, dead and covered in oil.

Most photos are missing dates and descriptions, though the FOIA request covered the period of April 20 to July 30, 2010. But they’re pretty shocking — which is probably why they weren’t made public at the height of the spill. “It just makes me furious,” said John Hocevar, a marine biologist who works for Greenpeace. “I had so many conversations with people in various government agencies working on the Gulf spill, and I feel like they were hiding things from all of us.”

Filed under: Animals, Oil, Pollution]]>http://grist.org/list/upsetting-photos-of-oil-slicked-turtles-from-deepwater-horizon/feed/0turtle netgristadminturtle netturtle smockturtle backturtle headCritical List: Fracking fluids reach aquifers in only a few years; Heartland’s weird campaignhttp://grist.org/list/critical-list-fracking-fluids-reach-aquifers-in-only-a-few-years-heartlands-weird-campaign/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/critical-list-fracking-fluids-reach-aquifers-in-only-a-few-years-heartlands-weird-campaign/#commentsFri, 04 May 2012 13:01:11 +0000http://grist.org/?p=96529]]>According to a new study, it only takes a few years for fracking fluids to migrate from deep in the ground into aquifers.

]]>http://grist.org/list/critical-list-fracking-fluids-reach-aquifers-in-only-a-few-years-heartlands-weird-campaign/feed/0gristadminCritical List: Other countries manage to pass climate change laws; Greenpeace is busyhttp://grist.org/list/critical-list-other-countries-manage-to-pass-climate-change-laws-greenpeace-is-busy/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/critical-list-other-countries-manage-to-pass-climate-change-laws-greenpeace-is-busy/#commentsThu, 03 May 2012 12:52:08 +0000http://grist.org/?p=96310]]>Plants are freaking out about climate change: Their timing for flowering and leafing is even more off than climate models predicted.

Also, species extinction could be a major driver of climate change and keep the environment from producing awesome resources like … food.

Two of the last few northern white rhinos on earth have done it. (You know, IT.) No word yet if the pair’s expecting a little rhino, but there’s a video, if you want to see what rhino sex looks like.

The National Zoo’s panda bears were not doing it (not doing it competently, at least) so zookeepers decided to artificially inseminate Mei Xiang. They live-tweeted the operation. Now is your chance to check out the blurry pictures.

]]>http://grist.org/list/critical-list-epa-official-resigns-skeptics-think-clouds-will-save-us/feed/0gristadminEx-BP employee deleted 300 texts about oil spill’s true sizehttp://grist.org/list/ex-bp-employee-deleted-300-texts-about-oil-spills-true-size/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/ex-bp-employee-deleted-300-texts-about-oil-spills-true-size/#commentsWed, 25 Apr 2012 15:12:05 +0000http://grist.org/?p=94884]]>Ever since the massive oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon well two years ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been investigating the spill. And the feds have finally filed the first criminal charges, for obstruction of justice, against an engineer named Kurt Mix who worked on the oil spill. Mix, it turns out, deleted 300 text messages that contained sensitive information about the extent of the spill, just before lawyers were going to collect that sort of information from him.

The DOJ’s case focuses on two incidents. In the first, “after Mix learned that his electronic files were to be collected by vendor working for BP’s lawyers,” he allegedly deleted a string of 200 text messages from his iPhone, the DOJ says. Those messages “included sensitive internal BP information collected in real-time as the Top Kill operation was occurring, which indicated that Top Kill was failing.”

In the second, a couple of weeks later, after Mix found out his iPhone was going to be imaged, he deleted another string of texts, this one 100 long, about how much oil was coming from the well.

In the aftermath of the oil spill, the estimates for its magnitude kept getting revised up. Part of what’s at issue here is if BP employees intentionally kept that information from the public. Mix’s lawyers say that he provided lawyers with information equivalent to what he deleted in different forms.

This round of legal blowback for BP and the other companies involved in the spill is just beginning. The DOJ has indicated that it’s still deep in this investigation and more arrests could be coming.

Federal prosecutors charged a former BP engineer with deleting text messages in order to keep information about the true size of the Deepwater Horizon spill from investigators.

The three cities with the most air pollution in the country are all in California, but L.A. only comes in third. A couple of inland metro areas come in first and second.

As often as the House tries to push through Keystone XL, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid steps up to shoot the proposal down.

In a new ad, the Obama super PAC brands Mitt Romney as the “$200 million man” who took millions from Big Oil. (Romney’s “in the [gas] tank” for Big Oil — get it?)

]]>http://grist.org/list/critical-list-mad-cow-disease-in-california-first-arrest-in-bp-oil-spill-investigation/feed/0gristadminCritical List: Climate bill passes Mexico’s senate; Bill Clinton tells enviros to ‘chill out’http://grist.org/list/critical-list-climate-bill-passes-mexicos-senate-bill-clinton-tells-enviros-to-chill-out/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/critical-list-climate-bill-passes-mexicos-senate-bill-clinton-tells-enviros-to-chill-out/#commentsFri, 20 Apr 2012 12:45:49 +0000http://grist.org/?p=94123]]>The Mexican Senate passed a climate change bill that’s all set to become law. Reuters reports it was “non-controversial.” No wonder Republicans are so set on keeping Mexican immigrants out of the country — they might bring in science.

Earth Day is coming up on Sunday. We’re gonna do it this year, guys! We’re gonna save the Earth in 24 hours!

On all other nights, we smoke only tobacco. Why, on this night, do we smoke weed?

]]>http://grist.org/list/critical-list-climate-bill-passes-mexicos-senate-bill-clinton-tells-enviros-to-chill-out/feed/0gristadminCritical List: Lorax tops box office; climate change worsened Texas droughthttp://grist.org/list/critical-list-lorax-tops-box-office-climate-change-worsened-texas-drought/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/critical-list-lorax-tops-box-office-climate-change-worsened-texas-drought/#commentsMon, 05 Mar 2012 13:41:47 +0000http://grist.org/?p=85562]]>Grist is not so keen on the movie version of The Lorax, but the rest of the country is, apparently: The movie topped box offices this weekends.

In Illinois, two cars crashed into a major oil pipeline, shutting it down.

Scientist Peter Gleick is taking a leave of absence from the Pacific Institute after the organization’s board of directors expressed concern about the methods he used to obtain internal documents from the Heartland Institute.

Meryl Streep won her gamillionth Oscar last night but also marked a personal fashion best by choosing an eco-friendly dress.

Four out of five wolves that were released near the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a reintroduction program are now dead.

Ireland may have to sell trees for timber in order to deal with its financial troubles.

Gardening may be therapeutic for people suffering from PTSD or depression.

]]>http://grist.org/list/critical-list-selenium-dumping-gives-fish-two-heads-germany-to-cut-solar-subsidies/feed/0gristadminEx-employee says BP fired him for trying to clean up oilhttp://grist.org/list/ex-employee-says-bp-fired-him-for-trying-to-clean-up-oil/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/ex-employee-says-bp-fired-him-for-trying-to-clean-up-oil/#commentsWed, 25 Jan 2012 16:54:12 +0000http://grist.org/?p=76992]]>In November 2011, BP fired an employee named August Walter, who had been working on clean-up of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Now, Wilson says the company fired him because he wouldn’t help gloss over its clean-up shortcuts. He’s suing BP in federal court.

BP and the Coast Guard are working on the clean-up together, and there’s a plan they’re supposed to follow. Walter says BP was not following the plan correctly and also hadn’t made enough progress to meet scheduled deadlines. He says that he pointed this out, tried to ensure the clean-up followed the proper plan, and would not change numbers to make it seem like BP had made more progress than it had — and the company responded to his efforts by first putting him on leave, then firing him.

Walter also says BP’s VP of operations told him he needed to make it seem like the clean-up was going according to plan in order to keep BP stock prices up.

Of course, that’s just Walter’s side of the story! And since multinational oil giants never cut corners in pursuit of profits, surely there must be another explanation for his firing. We’re waiting with bated breath for BP’s explanation.

Anticipating this new misinformation campaign, PolluterWatch created the commercial to show how API and it’s oil company members (Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron and all the usual suspects) are generating this phony citizen support for Big Oil.

What’s really fueling this bogus outreach is API’s $200 million budget to push dirty energy incentives and tax handouts for oil companies — something the petrol pushers can’t do on their own. Hence the need to prop up a phony corps of pseudo-interested citizens. They’ve even gone so far as to stage faux-rallies for their Energy Citizens astroturf campaign, as revealed by Greenpeace in a confidential API memo to oil executives. The con-job is essential to their strategy because American’s overwhelmingly support clean energy over dirty oil development.

We decided to fight astroturf with astroturf — the real stuff this time, rolling out a carpet of fake green grass at today’s API press conference, flanked by oil company logos that reveal who the real sponsors of this supposed citizens’ movement actually are. The K Street lobbyists seemed confused when the reality of their oily tactics was exposed for all to see.

Of course, all of this points back to our own, honest Vote 4 Energy campaign, which we’ll put up against the fake API version any day of the week.

API CEO Jack Gerard not only heralded the launch of the campaign, he championed even more dirty energy development like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in his “State of American Energy” address — a proverbial plastic cherry on top of this petroleum-derived sundae of misinformation.

Media aren’t fooled. Outlets from the Financial Times to Fortune reinforce what we all know: that this is nothing more than a fossil-fuel-filled PR push. The Hill uses refreshing candor right from the headline, labeling the whole effort nothing more than an ad campaign, quoting Greenpeace reps who reveal the truth despite the API soot-screen.

Oddly enough, just after bragging about a DC metro station “dominated” by API’s new Vote 4 Energy ads to those attending the campaign launch on Wednesday, Gerard say “This is not an advertising campaign. Our expectation is that it will be a conversation with the American people.” Except the Vote 4 Energy website’s front page clearly says “Vote4Energy launches ad campaign.” Hmmm… I guess that’s what astroturf campaigns are about — creating both sides of your “conversation with the American people” so you can easily come to a consensus with yourself.

Filed under: Article]]>http://grist.org/article/trimming-astroturf-from-the-american-petroleum-institutes-vote-4-energy-ad/feed/0gristadminBP spends $20 billion on oil but can’t afford solarhttp://grist.org/list/2011-12-22-bp-spends-20-billion-on-oil-but-cant-afford-solar/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/2011-12-22-bp-spends-20-billion-on-oil-but-cant-afford-solar/#commentsFri, 23 Dec 2011 00:12:23 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-12-22-bp-spends-20-billion-on-oil-but-cant-afford-solar/]]> BP gave being green a try, guys, really! They had a solar panel business going, but they had to kick it to the curb, because they just couldn't afford it. Times are tough, you know? Heck, the company only has $20 billion to spend on oil and gas every year. They have to pinch … well, not pennies, exactly, but $10,000 bills.*

Mike Petrucci, chief executive of BP Solar, wrote to his remaining 100 staff last week, saying "the continuing global economic challenges have significantly impacted the solar industry, making it difficult to sustain long-term returns for the company."

A spokesman for the wider group said the plunging value worldwide of solar panels – partly as a result of low-cost competition from China – had convinced BP that it had no future in a "commoditised" business.

BP has committed to spending $8 billion on renewable power through 2015, and the company says it'll fulfill that promise even as it shutters solar panel factories and lays off 1,750 staffers. But that's dwarfed by the annual expenditure on oil and gas. This puts them right in line with other oil companies, whose supposed commitments to renewables are also almost completely bogus, but it's particularly jarring because BP is in so much environmental debt — and because prior to the Gulf oil spill, BP talked a real big green game.

Given that BP has now closed its solar panel factories, shut down its alternative energy headquarters, and moved away from carbon capture and storage, it's not clear what the company's "Beyond Petroleum" slogan means anymore. Beyond petroleum to … other petroleum products?

* I looked it up and there are still a couple hundred in circulation, and statistically oil companies probably have all of them.

Filed under: Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Oil, Solar Power]]>http://grist.org/list/2011-12-22-bp-spends-20-billion-on-oil-but-cant-afford-solar/feed/1Greenpeace-BP-shutdown-Flickr_hp.jpggristadminBad guys bicker over Gulf oil spillhttp://grist.org/list/2011-12-06-bad-guys-bicker-over-gulf-oil-spill/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/2011-12-06-bad-guys-bicker-over-gulf-oil-spill/#commentsWed, 07 Dec 2011 02:19:34 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-12-06-bad-guys-bicker-over-gulf-oil-spill/]]> Apparently today is the day we talk about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? The White House released its year-in-the-making report about what needs to be done for cleanup ("more better things"), and now it looks like BP is still trying to palm off blame. They're claiming that Halliburton, which produced the cement used to seal the faulty well, hid evidence that their product was defective.

BP has apparently gotten sick of paying for cleanup efforts, because they've filed papers in a New Orleans federal court that accuse Halliburton of hiding computer modeling evidence that would have shown their cement was to blame for the disaster. The trial is set to start in February and last about three months.

Federal and independent investigations have already said that Halliburton should shoulder some of the blame, but BP's assertions go beyond that — they're alleging a deliberate cover-up.

In Monday's court filing, BP alleges that Halliburton employees discarded and destroyed early test results they performed on the same batch of cement slurry used in the Macondo well during an internal investigation into the disaster.

BP said Halliburton's chief cement mixer for Gulf projects testified in depositions that the cement slurry seemed "thin" to him but that he chose not to write about his findings to his bosses out of fear he would be misinterpreted.

Halliburton, meanwhile, says that none of this is true. Girls, girls, don't fight. You're BOTH awful.

After the BP oil spill, the X Prize Foundation offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could come up with a better way of cleaning up oil. But the winning team, Team Elastec/American Marine, didn’t merely do better -- they blew other oil skimmers out of the water (ha). Their skimmer sucks up nearly 90 percent of spilled oil. You can check it out in the video above. The details, according to NPR:

]]>

After the BP oil spill, the X Prize Foundation offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could come up with a better way of cleaning up oil. But the winning team, Team Elastec/American Marine, didn’t merely do better — they blew other oil skimmers out of the water (ha). Their skimmer sucks up nearly 90 percent of spilled oil. You can check it out in the video above. The details, according to NPR:

The industry standard is for oil skimmers to remove 1,100 gallons of oil per minute. The X Challenge set the bar at 2,500 gallons per minute.

Obviously it'd be preferable for oil not to spill into waterways at all, but this is apparently too much to ask. And as long as it's a risk, a better cleanup strategy is a welcome advancement.

If carbon is a risk (and it is!), the market should adjust for that, valuing companies with high "exposure to climate change" less than those that are climate-resilient. But since markets don't seem to ever do what they should in theory, that hasn't happened yet.

]]> While U.S. border monitors were busy looking for terrorists in cargo containers, a slew of invasive species slipped unnoticed into the country.

If carbon is a risk (and it is!), the market should adjust for that, valuing companies with high "exposure to climate change" less than those that are climate-resilient. But since markets don't seem to ever do what they should in theory, that hasn't happened yet.

Electric vehicles are only as climate-positive as the electric grid that fuels them, so in places like China where coal-fired electricity reigns, EVs can account for more carbon than gas-powered cars.

How a recycling company renovates its office: it uses trash. TerraCycle's new digs use soda bottles and vinyl records for walls, old doors for desks, scrap carpeting, and more.

A judge ruled that the EPA was a little too excited about regulating West Virginia coal mines and should have gone through more formal rulemaking on guidelines to dump coal waste into streams. Another part of their work, on water quality, is still at issue, which means coal companies could lose in the long run.

]]> Jonathan Silver, DOE's loan guarantee czar, is the first government employee to lose his job over Solyndra. leaving the government because the loan guarantee program doesn't have any money left, anyway.

A judge ruled that the EPA was a little too excited about regulating West Virginia coal mines and should have gone through more formal rulemaking on guidelines to dump coal waste into streams. Another part of their work, on water quality, is still at issue, which means coal companies could lose in the long run.

Some beluga whales have absorbed so much pollution that they're treated as toxic waste.

How much do we really know about how solar panels work? Or, more to the point, why they don’t really work that well?

Fall foliage is starting to show up later in the season, so plan your Vermont trips accordingly.

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Coal, Politics, Pollution, Solar Power]]>http://grist.org/list/2011-10-07-critical-list-does-loan-guarantee-head-out-some-beluga-whales-ar/feed/0gristadminBig Oil's mountain of cashhttp://grist.org/oil/2011-09-29-big-oils-mountain-of-cash/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/oil/2011-09-29-big-oils-mountain-of-cash/#commentsFri, 30 Sep 2011 04:36:53 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-09-29-big-oils-mountain-of-cash/]]>Cross-posted from the Center for American Progress. This post was coauthored by Valeri Vasquez, special assistant for energy policy at the Center for American Progress.

On Sept. 19, President Barack Obama announced his plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 12 years, including raising $1.5 trillion by closing special interest loopholes and other revenue raisers. This includes eliminating $41 billion in tax loopholes for the oil and gas industry [PDF, p. 63] over the next decade.

Big Oil is predictably opposed to losing its unnecessary tax breaks. The American Petroleum Institute, or API, the oil industry’s lobbying muscle, quickly claimed that “the administration plan would hurt jobs and investment.”

But this claim ignores the fact that the big five oil companies — BP, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — have ample financial resources that dwarf the value of these tax breaks. These companies enjoy billions in cash reserves, made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade, and at least one company (ExxonMobil) pays a lower effective tax rate than the average American family.

In other words, Big Oil can readily afford to contribute its “fair share” to reduce America’s debt.

A Federal Reserve report released this month documented the massive cash reserves held by American corporations. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Corporations have a higher share of cash on their balance sheets than at any time in nearly half a century, as businesses build up buffers rather than invest in new plants or hiring.

Nonfinancial companies held more than $2 trillion in cash and other liquid assets at the end of June, the Federal Reserve reported Friday, up more than $88 billion from the end of March. Cash accounted for 7.1% of all company assets, everything from buildings to bonds, the highest level since 1963.

The big five oil companies are among those corporations that amassed huge cash reserves. In fact, a Center for American Progress (CAP) analysis of company Security and Exchange Commission filings determined that the three largest American oil companies — Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil — had $27 billion in cash or equivalent assets as of midyear 2011.

BP and Shell, the two largest foreign oil companies that operate in the United States, had combined cash reserves of nearly $32 billion at the end of last year (the latest data available). Added together, these five companies are sitting on cash resources of $59 billion, which is 30 times more than the estimated $2 billion in annual tax breaks that these companies receive.

The past decade was very prosperous for the big five oil companies due in part to high oil prices, including the record of $147 per barrel in July 2008. A CAP assessment determined that these companies made more than $900 billion in profit from 2001 to 2010. High oil prices this year earned them a whopping $67 billion in six months. These funds come from the pockets of American drivers forced to pay up to $4 per gallon for gasoline.

On Sept. 19, President Obama implored wealthy individuals and corporations to help reduce the deficit, too:

Those who have done well, including me, should pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that made our success possible. We shouldn’t get a better deal than ordinary families get.

Yet at least one oil company, ExxonMobil, has a much better deal than ordinary families. It made $310 billion in profits over the past decade and another $21 billion in the first six months of 2011 alone. A Washington Post expose based on a CAP analysis, however, found that ExxonMobil had a lower effective tax rate than the typical middle-class family. ExxonMobil’s effective tax rate was 18 percent while average households pay 21 percent — 15 percent more than Exxon’s tax rate.

The Post determined that these tax loopholes “have helped make the oil industry one of the most profitable, when measured by cash flow and return on investment.”

API claims that Big Oil needs the tax loopholes to create jobs and make investments. But are the big five oil companies investing these funds in job creation or clean energy? The evidence says no.

“Profits and Pink Slips: How Big Oil and Gas Companies Are Not Creating U.S. Jobs or Paying Their Fair Share,” by the House Natural Resources Committee Democrats, determined [PDF] that Big Oil companies shed jobs over the last five years:

Despite generating $546 billion in profits between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP combined to reduce their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees over that time.

Just in 2010 alone, the big 5 oil companies reduced their global workforce by a combined 4,400 employees, while making a combined $73 billion in profits.

So if the big five companies aren’t hiring additional workers, are they investing in research and development? The Congressional Research Service (CRS) found that the companies invested relatively little in overall research and development: “Total R&D expenditure of the five [largest oil] firms in 2010 was $3.6 billion.” This was just 4.7 percent of their $76 billion in profits.

The CRS noted that “it is difficult to determine how much of the R&D spending … was spent on green R&D projects from data published by the oil majors themselves.” These investments would provide financial and energy security for Americans in the grip of the volatile global petroleum market and help mitigate the climate change driven by fossil fuel consumption. But it did compile the information on alternative fuels and cleantech investments provided by the big five companies to the Senate Finance Committee for a May hearing on Oil and Gas Tax Incentives and Rising Energy Prices. It appears that these companies spent a miserly 1.2 percent on alternative fuels and cleantech research in 2010:

This finding confirms a 2009 CAP analysis that determined these companies devoted a mere 4 percent of their collective 2008 earnings
to cleantech research and development. That year was their second-highest profit level.

Clearly the big five oil companies are not investing their huge profits in hiring workers or conducting alternative fuels research and development. Instead, many of these companies use their profits to buy back their own stock, an action that enriches their board of directors, senior executives, and shareholders.

These companies spent slightly more than one-quarter of their profits on stock buybacks in the first half of 2011. This dwarfs the previous year’s investment in research and development (see attached Excel spreadsheet). Yet the big five oil companies still claw to keep $20 billion worth of tax breaks.

President Obama has posed stark choices to reduce the federal budget deficit:

Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both.

Either we gut education and medical research, or we’ve got to reform the tax code so that the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don’t get. We can’t afford to do both.

He proposed that the big five oil companies contribute $20 billion over a decade since these extraordinarily rich companies hold billions of dollars in cash reserves, made nearly $1 trillion in profits, and the biggest of them pays a lower effective federal tax rate than the average American family.

It’s up to Congress to support seniors, students, workers, and middle-class families instead of genuflecting to Big Oil companies and their lobbyists once again.

Could one of the Gulf of Mexico’s most abundant fish face the same fate as Prince William Sound’s crashed herring population?

A new study [PDF] by a team of researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences raises alarming questions about the lingering effects of the BP oil spill on Gulf killifish. The minnow-like wetlands resident, also known as bull minnow or cacahoe, is a critical part of the Gulf’s food chain and was chosen for study by a team of researchers because of its abundance and sensitivity to any effects of toxic pollution.

The study finds that oil exposure has altered the killifish’s cellular function in ways that are known to be predictive of developmental abnormalities, decreased hatching success, and decreased embryo and larval survival.

“Population-level effects, if they emerge, are going to emerge across several generations, so effects on long-lived species will take longer to emerge than for short lived species,” says lead research Andrew Whitehead of Louisiana State University.

“This study is alarming because similar health effects seen in fish, sea otters, and harlequin ducks following the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska were predictive of population impacts, from decline to outright collapse,” says Dr. Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. “Not only are Gulf killifish an important food source for redfish and speckled trout, but killifish eat mosquitoes, helping to keep the pest population in check.”

The year of the Exxon Valdez oil disaster in Alaska in 1989, the stocks of herring stayed fairly steady. The next year? Still relatively stable, and a lot of people assumed the threat had passed. But four years later, herring stocks collapsed. Fishing licenses, which had been sold from one generation of fishermen to the next and served as a dependable retirement fund, were suddenly worthless. The effects rippled up the food chain as predators like orcas were deprived of a critical food source.

Two decades after the Exxon Valdez spilled almost 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, the herring still have not come back.

Without that cornerstone species, the commercial fishing season now starts two months later, in May instead of March. Oil still wells up in the little pits dug by sea otters as they forage for clams.

So what can we do now?

“Wherever oil continues to be found in the Gulf, it should be removed if doing so won’t cause more environmental harm than good,” says NWF’s Dr. Inkley. “But in addition, Congress must act to protect the Gulf’s people and wildlife by passing comprehensive response legislation. Action is urgently needed, both to improve oil and gas drilling safety regulations so this doesn’t happen again, and to dedicate fines and penalties to Gulf Coast restoration.”

Filed under: Article]]>http://grist.org/article/2011-09-28-valdez-redux-scientists-sound-alarm-over-key-gulf-fish-species/feed/0gristadminBP will be messing up Australia nexthttp://grist.org/list/2011-09-26-bp-will-be-messing-up-australia-next/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/2011-09-26-bp-will-be-messing-up-australia-next/#commentsMon, 26 Sep 2011 22:36:14 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-09-26-bp-will-be-messing-up-australia-next/ The Great Australian Bight has all of the hallmarks of a place you really don't want to mess with — incredible marine diversity, endangered whales, awesome natural beauty. But the Australian government decided that this would also be a good place to let BP prospect for oil, and gave the company a tax break to ease their way on that project.]]> The Great Australian Bight has all of the hallmarks of a place you really don't want to mess with — incredible marine diversity, endangered whales, awesome natural beauty. But the Australian government decided that this would also be a good place to let BP prospect for oil, and gave the company a tax break to ease their way on that project. As Australia's ABC Environment points out:

Even the method used to hunt for oil reserves is destructive for sea life. Seismic testing is used by oil and gas companies to explore beneath the ocean floor for oil and gas sediments. In order to measure these sediments, large ships fire high-intensity air guns deep into the ocean.

Clearly the best use of this area. Clearly.

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Oil]]>http://grist.org/list/2011-09-26-bp-will-be-messing-up-australia-next/feed/0powerstation-kogan-solar-boost-500.jpggristadminShocker: BP oil spill was BP's faulthttp://grist.org/list/2011-09-14-shocker-bp-oil-spill-was-bps-fault/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/2011-09-14-shocker-bp-oil-spill-was-bps-fault/#commentsWed, 14 Sep 2011 23:23:25 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-09-14-shocker-bp-oil-spill-was-bps-fault/ A federal report, based on an investigation by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, has officially placed the blame for the BP oil spill at the feet of -- who knew? -- BP.]]> A federal report, based on an investigation by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, has officially placed the blame for the BP oil spill at the feet of — who knew? — BP.

The report, released Wednesday, said in the days leading up to the disaster, BP made a series of decisions that complicated cementing operations, added risk, and may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the cement job.

BP isn't alone in the stocks here — cement contractor Halliburton (THOSE guys!) and Transocean, which owned the rig, also made mistakes. But according to the report, BP deserves the lion's share of blame for using insufficient barriers, making risk-increasing decisions about how to place important structures in wells, failing to do adequate risk assessment, prioritizing cost-cutting over safety, and failing to communicate with Transocean.

It's kind of amazing/appalling that this even needs to be said at this point, but you know the government: they like to make sure things are done right. Or anyway they like to make sure things are done slow.

The scariest horror movies end with a hint that the killer or monster, though defeated, isn't dead and will rise again. With tropical storms sweeping through the Gulf, coastal residents are finding that zombie residues of the BP oil spill are coming out of their lairs to re-terrorize beach-goers, boaters, and the fishing industry. Tides hustled up by tropical storms are bringing oily residues, tar mats, and tar balls onto the beach. It's as bad as it sounds. Check out these pictures that NRDC collected — if you want to brave the sight of oozy, giant, black tar creatures.

]]>

The scariest horror movies end with a hint that the killer or monster, though defeated, isn't dead and will rise again. With tropical storms sweeping through the Gulf, coastal residents are finding that zombie residues of the BP oil spill are coming out of their lairs to re-terrorize beach-goers, boaters, and the fishing industry. Tides hustled up by tropical storms are bringing oily residues, tar mats, and tar balls onto the beach. It's as bad as it sounds. Check out these pictures that NRDC collected — if you want to brave the sight of oozy, giant, black tar creatures. NRDC also points out that crabbers and other people who make their living on the ocean had been noticing lingering consequences of the oil spill even before the storms. One crabber wrote that she hasn't been able to find crabs and that when she does, they’re terrifying:

The ones that are [here] look as if they have been crawling on a Tar road with black all over the bottoms of them. When ya cook them they stink. When ya eat them after about 3 they leave a nasty taste in your mouth.

A little more than a year after its negligence led to the despoilment of the Gulf of Mexico, oil giant BP is funding a right-wing lobbying group that opposes regulation of offshore drilling. This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its annual meeting in New Orleans, La. ALEC is a political corruption group funded by Koch Industries and other corporations to write legislation for state-level Republican legislators. ThinkProgress has obtained a list of the conference’s sponsors, and BP is at the head of the list as a “President” level funder. According to sources, that is likely a $100,000 contribution.

Filed under: Climate & Energy, Oil]]>http://grist.org/oil/2011-08-05-bp-funds-push-offshore-drilling-louisiana-gulf-of-mexico/feed/0bp-180x150.jpggristadminSponsor list.Critical List: Yellowstone pipe could have carried tar-sands oil; L.A. survived Carmageddonhttp://grist.org/list/2011-07-18-critical-list-yellowstone-pipe-could-have-carried-tar-sands-oil/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/2011-07-18-critical-list-yellowstone-pipe-could-have-carried-tar-sands-oil/#commentsMon, 18 Jul 2011 19:43:55 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-07-18-critical-list-yellowstone-pipe-could-have-carried-tar-sands-oil/ The Yellowstone River spill could have included heavier, more corrosive tar-sands oil, federal officials said. This type of oil eats through pipes more quickly, and if ExxonMobiil was using those pipes to transport tar-sands oil, that decision could have contributed to the spill.

Carmageddon = over. And it turns out that, given the choice to avoid the freeway by plane or bike, it’s faster to bike.

Your fish oil tablets are destroying marine ecosystems.]]> The Yellowstone River spill could have included heavier, more corrosive tar-sands oil, federal officials said. This type of oil eats through pipes more quickly, and if ExxonMobiil was using those pipes to transport tar-sands oil, that decision could have contributed to the spill.

Carmageddon = over. And it turns out that, given the choice to avoid the freeway by plane or bike, it’s faster to bike.

Oops — probably should have checked out this new guide about the carbon footprint of different meats before I ordered lamb for dinner last night.

Filed under: Cities, Climate & Energy, Climate Policy, Infrastructure, Oil]]>http://grist.org/list/2011-07-18-critical-list-yellowstone-pipe-could-have-carried-tar-sands-oil/feed/0gristadminGulf shrimping after the BP oil spill [VIDEO]http://grist.org/food/2011-06-24-shrimping-in-the-gulf-after-the-bp-oil-spill-video/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/food/2011-06-24-shrimping-in-the-gulf-after-the-bp-oil-spill-video/#commentsFri, 24 Jun 2011 06:47:17 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-06-24-shrimping-in-the-gulf-after-the-bp-oil-spill-video/]]>This second episode in New Orleans started with an early wake-up for a drive out to the tip of Louisiana. As we approached our destination, I noticed that many buildings were new — storms had simply wiped out so much. Finding someone to take us out fishing was difficult: Gas is expensive, and it makes little sense for your average fisher to go out for less than a few days. Luckily, we found Sinh Pham, a Vietnamese fisherman eking out a living despite low dock prices for his shrimp, high fuel prices, and the uncertainty of the BP oil spill effects on his industry. There are plenty of disagreements out there about the future of fishing and shrimping in the gulf, but I can confirm one thing: The food is still awesome. Watch:

Filed under: Food]]>http://grist.org/food/2011-06-24-shrimping-in-the-gulf-after-the-bp-oil-spill-video/feed/0shrimp-new-orleans-flickr-the-perennial-plate.jpggristadminCritical List: McKibben's march on Washington; speeding up permits for offshore drillinghttp://grist.org/list/2011-06-23-critical-list-mckibbens-march-on-washington-speeding-up-permits/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed_bp
http://grist.org/list/2011-06-23-critical-list-mckibbens-march-on-washington-speeding-up-permits/#commentsThu, 23 Jun 2011 19:24:29 +0000http://www.grist.org/article/2011-06-23-critical-list-mckibbens-march-on-washington-speeding-up-permits/ Bill McKibben invites you to come to D.C. in August and march on the White House over and over and over again. The goal is to convince the administration that siphoning Canada's tar sands through the Keystone XL pipelines is not a good idea and also to get heat stroke.

House Republicans don't care who was to blame for the Macondo spill; they just want the EPA to approve permits for offshore drilling more quickly. Bored with this spill! Let’s start on a new one!]]> Bill McKibben invites you to come to D.C. in August and march on the White House over and over and over again. The goal is to convince the administration that siphoning Canada's tar sands through the Keystone XL Pipeline is not a good idea, and also to get heat stroke.